Interlaken or Marseille?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.
Wins on beaches & swimming and places to eat with your weighting.
What matters to you?
Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.
The verdict
Choose Interlaken if you want a small town with protected country around it, where the days are spent walking and on day trips, and a season that really only runs from June to September.
Choose Marseille if you want beaches and warm sea, a wide choice of places to eat and drink, and a centre where the sights sit close together.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Marseille leads by 67 points.67
| Interlaken | Marseille | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 67 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 2 |
| Beaches 10 km | 12 | 64 |
| Coast distance | 713 km | 0 km |
| Water distance | — | 0 km |
Places to eat. Marseille leads by 46 points.46
| Interlaken | Marseille | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 29 | 75 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 118 | 1,320 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 17 | 39 |
Museums & heritage. Marseille leads by 27 points.27
| Interlaken | Marseille | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 23 | 50 |
| Museums within 10 km | 5 | 33 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 2 | 23 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 40 | 70 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 2 | 1 |
Nightlife. Marseille leads by 44 points.44
| Interlaken | Marseille | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 4 | 48 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 42 | 544 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 38 | 454 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 90 | 83 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 3 | 30 |
Nature & day trips. Marseille leads by 10 points.10
| Interlaken | Marseille | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 27 | 37 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 19 | 15 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 0 | 13 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 56 |
| Park area within 2 km | 5 hectares | 25 hectares |
Good for families. Marseille leads by 30 points.30
| Interlaken | Marseille | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 14 | 44 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 11 | 17 |
| Park area within 2 km | 5 hectares | 25 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 0 | 4 |
Sights concentration. Marseille leads by 36 points.36
| Interlaken | Marseille | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 22 | 58 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 14 | 111 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Marseille leads by 27 points.27
| Interlaken | Marseille | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 35 | 62 |
| Price level global | 110.5 | 73.7 |
| Daily budget | €248 | €160 |
Year-round weather. Marseille leads by 18 points.18
| Interlaken | Marseille | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 57 | 75 |
| Monthly daytime high | 2.8 °C to 23.6 °C | 11.8 °C to 30.7 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 34 mm to 68 mm | 11 mm to 82 mm |
| Dry months | 3 | 6 |
Where they differ
Interlaken leads on the country around it: 19% of the land is protected against 15% around Marseille, and 2 UNESCO-listed places sit within day-trip reach against 1.
Marseille has 64 beaches nearby to Interlaken's 12, and two months of sea at 21°C or more. It also has many times as many restaurants near the centre, a wider range of kitchens, and many times as many bars and clubs, most of them near the centre too.
Where they are alike
Both are places you leave the centre for. Around Interlaken 19% of the land is protected and around Marseille 15%, and each has UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, so a week in either can be built around trips out.
Both peak in July and are coldest in January, and both put museums and heritage in the mix, though Marseille's sit tightly around the centre and Interlaken's interest lies further out.
Which traveller are you?
If you are going to swim, it is Marseille: 64 beaches nearby and a sea reaching 22°C in August. Interlaken has 12 beaches, but no month of water anywhere near that warm.
Walkers, and anyone who wants the day to begin with a departure rather than a street, will prefer Interlaken: a higher share of protected land, 19%, and 2 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach.
Families are better served in Marseille: about twice as many attractions near the centre, far more park space within walking distance, and 4 theme parks within reach where Interlaken has none.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget figures, €248 for Switzerland and €160 for France, are national estimates of restaurant and hotel price levels, not measurements of either city. A small town and a large city can each sit far from their country's average, so treat the gap as background rather than a verdict on what your trip will cost.
No weather station near Interlaken records sunshine hours, so that figure is missing rather than low, and the monthly picture there rests on temperature and rainfall alone. The beach count is also a summer asset: Marseille's warmest sea arrives in the months its coast is busiest.
When should you go?
The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Interlaken: 2005-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Meiringen / Unterbach (19.3 km from centre). Marseille: 1991-2020 normals, Marseille / Marignane (20.6 km from centre).
Interlaken is at its best from June to September: highs of 22-24°C in summer, with September the driest of those months at 38mm while midsummer runs nearer 61mm. Outside that, winter highs of 3-5°C settle it.
Marseille has the longer season, May to September at 24-31°C, and July is the driest month in either place, at 11mm. Autumn is its wet stretch, so trips after summer should expect rain even with the sea still at 21°C.
Getting there
| Flying from | Interlaken | Marseille |
|---|---|---|
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 1 h 15 m €163-196 ZRH · 100 km | 1 h 25 m €110-119 MRS · 21 km |
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 1 h 35 m €110-163 ZRH · 100 km | 1 h 50 m €65-134 1 stop MRS · 21 km |
| IstanbulIST, SAW | 2 h 45 m €110-133 ZRH · 100 km | 2 h 55 m €219-245 1 stop MRS · 21 km |
| AmsterdamAMS | 1 h 25 m €234-276 ZRH · 100 km | 1 h 50 m no fares MRS · 21 km |
| MadridMAD | 2 h 5 m €158-220 1 stop ZRH · 100 km | 1 h 35 m no fares MRS · 21 km |
| LisbonLIS | 2 h 40 m €188-233 ZRH · 100 km | 2 h 10 m €136-184 1 stop MRS · 21 km |
| BrusselsBRU, CRL | 1 h 15 m no fares ZRH · 100 km | 1 h 40 m €86-123 1 stop MRS · 21 km |
| FrankfurtFRA, HHN | 1 h 0 m no fares ZRH · 100 km | 1 h 35 m no fares MRS · 21 km |
| MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX | 7 h 45 m no fares ZRH · 100 km | 7 h 45 m no fares MRS · 21 km |
| SeoulICN, GMP | 10 h 55 m no fares ZRH · 100 km | 11 h 35 m no fares MRS · 21 km |
The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-08 to 2026-09, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.
Before you go
| Measure | Interlaken | Marseille |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | French, German, Italian, Romansh | French |
| Currency | Swiss Franc (CHF) | Euro (EUR) |
| Sockets | CJ230 V, 50 Hz | CE230 V, 50 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer |
| Emergency number | 112 | 112 |
| Elevation | 571 m | 0 m |
| Main airport | Zürich Airport (ZRH)100 km from centre181 non-stop destinations | Marseille Provence Airport (MRS)21 km from centre125 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 10 days | 11 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Interlaken | Marseille |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 6,123 | 886,040 |
| People per km² | 1,424 | 3,683 |
| Museums within 10 km | 3 | 27 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 2 | 1 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 22 | 93 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | – | 2 months |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Interlaken or Marseille somewhere new.